DRIVE TO KILL SUBWAY; YAROSLAVSKY INITIATIVE WOULD FORBID MTA SPENDING UNDERGROUND.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is expected to launch an initiative drive today to stop the MTA from using sales taxes to build any new subways beyond one now being finished in North Hollywood.

Yaroslavsky said he will immediately begin gathering the 103,500 signatures of registered county voters needed to put the measure on the November ballot. He has until July to do so.

``The current course the MTA is on is the wrong course; it will bankrupt the agency,'' said Yaroslavsky, a Metropolitan Transportation Board member and author of the MTA Reform and Accountability Act of 1998.

``This forces the MTA to redirect funds to a more affordable, efficient and sensible transit system,'' he said.

Yaroslavsky said he has already established Citizens to Reform the MTA to raise the money for the initiative campaign.

If passed in November, the initiative would finish the job the MTA halfheartedly began in January, when it voted to mothball ``for at least six months'' Metro Red Line subway projects to the Eastside and Mid-City while it tries to stabilize its perilous finances.

Yaroslavsky said the Red Line project should be stopped completely.

``I'm saying junk it,'' he said. ``The economic assumptions are not there, the funding is not there, the geology has proven more complex and expensive than we expected. It's taking far too long, and it's far more expensive than we expected.''

The measure would forbid the MTA from using the more than $800 million in annual sales tax revenues that it receives from Proposition A, which passed in 1980, and Proposition C, which passed in 1990, to build more subway lines beyond the North Hollywood extension set to open in about two years.

It would still allow the money to be spent on light rail construction, such as the halted Blue Line extension to Pasadena, as well as busways, road and bus-system improvements.

The measure also would create a five-member oversight board of citizens, one each appointed by the MTA, the county and the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Pasadena.

That board would oversee an annual audit and public report on MTA spending and adherence to the two propositions' requirements.

The measure also would loosen restrictions on one portion of Proposition C, the 25 percent devoted to highway improvements. That money has mostly financed car pool lanes, but construction backlogs have left a few hundred million dollars sitting in accounts unspent and untouchable, while the rest of the MTA is struggling with deficits, Yaroslavsky said.

Under his initiative, that money could be spent for improvements along railroad rights-of-way, either for light rail or such projects as dedicated busways, as have been proposed for the San Fernando Valley along Burbank and Chandler boulevards.

Yaroslavsky had been debating for months whether to launch the initiative drive, but said he made up his mind when he recently learned that MTA board members are working to keep the rail projects alive.

MTA executives had proposed seeking permission from the federal government to have more flexibility in spending hundreds of millions in federal funds that have been committed to subways. The executives wanted to preserve the funding without being forced to use it for subways. One alternative might be to build light rail in the same transportation corridors.

But Yaroslavsky said the executives told him they gave up the idea after encountering strong opposition from a majority of the board and key Congressional supporters.

``What they had decided was that it would be subway or no way,'' said Yaroslavsky, who declined to name the board members. ``For those who felt subway was dead, it's not. If I thought it was, I wouldn't be going through all this.''

MTA Communications Director Marc Littman said the agency would have no immediate reaction to the initiative. None of the agency's top executives could be reached for comment Sunday.

Deputy Press Secretary Dean Leavenworth said Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the MTA board's chairman, also would decline comment until he had a chance to review the measure.

The proposal received a mixed reaction from other board members, some of whom said the agency can't afford underground construction projects. Others said the agency shouldn't restrict its options.

County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a longtime subway critic, strongly backed the proposal.

``The proposal will pass overwhelmingly as a result of the past failed subway programs,'' Antonovich said. ``The San Fernando Valley taxpayers have paid over $1 billion and have not received transit programs commensurate with that.''

Glendale Mayor Larry Zarian said, ``On the surface I would support it, but I don't want to do it blindly. I've been advocating that approach for years. If we had used our heads previously, we could have built a whole system with the wasted money. This is probably 10 years too late, but it is better late than never.''

Boyle Heights businessman Jose Legaspi said the initiative was premature. ``I think subways should always remain an option,'' Legaspi said. ``I don't think we should think about exempting any kind of transportation mode from the system. If it has been a difficult system to implement before, it's because of bad decisions that were made before. That doesn't mean that with proper controls it couldn't be done better.''

Los Angeles Councilman Hal Bernson couldn't be reached for comment, but has said in recent weeks he strongly supports the measure's intent.